Original subtitles

[William Shatner] A puzzling meteor

with the power to harm.

A strange interstellar object

that may have been sent from another world.

And harmful pathogens

traveling through our universe

that could threaten all life on Earth.

Over the centuries,

the magnificent spectacle of the night sky

has filled us with wonder.

Here on Earth,

we're witness to extraordinary landscapes

where objects from space

made colossal collisions long ago.

Meteors, asteroids, and comets

are all part of our fascinating galaxy.

What secrets of the universe do these space rocks hold?

And what is their potential impact on life as we know it?

Well, that is what we'll try and find out.

? ?

[Shatner reads on-screen text]

Here, in this former mining town

where people spent decades

digging for precious metals belowground,

researcher Robert Ward is the owner of a rock collection

unlike anything else found on Earth.

Because these pockmarked specimens,

with their dazzling patterns and unusual compositions,

originated in outer space.

[Ward] Over the past 30 years,

I've built one of the world's largest

private meteorite collections.

We have some of the finest samples

of some of the most important meteorite classes on display.

We have rocks from the Moon, Mars.

We have a vast diversity of meteorites

from all over the solar system.

[Shatner] Despite the remarkable origins of Robert's collection,

there's one meteorite

that is quite extraordinary.

It is known as a chondrite,

which means that it formed

in the earliest days of the solar system.

And the reason Robert's meteorite is so special

is that, unlike most other chondrites,

which are so fragile that they typically break apart

and explode as they enter Earth's atmosphere...

...this one remained intact

even after it impacted on the ground at 28,000 miles per hour.

[Ward] So this is an actual piece of the meteorite itself

that I recovered essentially intact.

And you can see it's fairly soft

and it comes apart easily.

And it's not a dense object like an iron meteorite.

So, when it enters the atmosphere,

it's supposed to break apart, according to physics.

And this one didn't.

[Shatner] Why didn't the meteorite

in Robert Ward's collection explode

before it hit the Earth like other chondrites?

Perhaps a clue may be found

by examining the story of its impact

and what happened in the aftermath.

[Shatner reads on-screen text]

High in the Andes Mountains,

residents of this tiny village are distressed

by the presence of a mysterious light...

...that appears suddenly in the noonday sky

and begins racing towards them at an alarming speed.

[Ward] In the skies over this tiny village

of Carancas in Peru,

a small asteroid actually entered the atmosphere,

and these people saw what they thought

was a star in the sky falling.

And the object tore through the atmosphere.

And this is a pretty big thing.

It was probably the size of a compact car.

And it's penetrating the atmosphere

at 28,000 miles an hour.

And then, bam,

it impacts like a nuclear bomb, pretty much

right at the edge of their village.

And they see this ejecta cloud go into the sky.

There was a smoke trail in the sky.

It terrified them.

[Shatner] Despite their fear,

curious locals begin to gather around the impact site.

What they discover is a 20-foot-deep

by 100-foot-wide crater

that is flooded with water.

And buried deep in the earth

is a 12-ton meteor.

While the massive crater was a remarkable sight to see,

many local villagers found themselves overcome...

...by a mysterious illness.

[Hugh Newman] When this meteor strike happened,

a lot of people trying to get a glimpse of it,

trying to get a sample of it, even.

But what happened was

there was a toxic reaction to it,

and loads of people became incredibly sick.

[Andrew Collins] They started to suffer

from what might be described as radiation sickness.

And in addition to this,

their own animals

started suffering in a similar way.

So what was going on here?

Was this simply a meteorite that had landed at Carancas?

Or was there something more?

[Shatner] More than 200 people were admitted to the hospital

after being exposed to the Carancas meteor.

According to reports,

they suffered from symptoms ranging from severe headaches,

dizziness, nausea

to skin rashes and respiratory problems.

[praying in Spanish]

While many of the villagers believed

their sickness was a punishment from God...

...doctors began to suspect that the meteor

had released a deadly toxin

from deep underground.

So one of the theories about why people actually got sick

is when the meteor hit the Earth,

it created this 100-foot-wide crater.

And so people have now believed

they may have got poisoned

simply from what was coming from the earth

and it being hit by this meteor.

[Collins] It is a fact that, in the area of Carancas,

there is a high level of arsenic in the ground.

And, almost certainly, this was vaporized as well.

And this was one of the things that was making

both the people and the animals so sick.

[Shatner] Is it possible that the impact

of the Carancas meteor released arsenic into the environment,

poisoning those who came into contact with it?

Or did it deliver an unidentified contagion

from outer space?

[Ward] There's always been questions

within the scientific community

about whether there could actually be biologics

on a meteorite.

So, you know, some kind of alien microbe

or whatnot in a meteorite.

Meteorites contain amino acids, sugars, water.

All the building blocks for life are on these asteroids.

So, is it possible? Absolutely.

[Graham Lau] This is an idea that's been around

in science fiction for a very long time-

this idea that there could be

viruses or-or some kind of pathogenic bacterium

or cell that could come from space and fall onto the planet,

maybe coming down in a cometary impact

or coming down with some of these grains of dust

and material.

[Shatner] Is there any evidence that toxic pathogens

were delivered to Carancas from the cosmos?

While Robert Ward and his team secured a small meteor sample

from the impact site,

the answer to just what biologics

may have landed on Earth remains buried,

deep underground.

[Ward] Well, our ultimate goal was obviously to find

this large meteorite

that we presumed was in the bottom of the crater.

We were literally standing on the crater rim,

and the water's being pumped out.

And we are so close. We're literally within feet

of uncovering this large, possibly multiton meteorite

in the bottom of the crater,

when all work was brought to a stop by the mayor.

The excavation wasn't gonna come to fruition,

which was very disappointing.

[Shatner] Could the Carancas meteor have actually contained

evidence of alien germs?

Perhaps we'll never know.

But the sheer possibility is truly frightening.

For me, the biggest fear is actually germs and diseases

from outer space via an asteroid or something hitting the Earth.

Once the virus is here, by definition,

it looks like all our other viruses.

Unless you catch a meteor in the act of delivering the virus,

there's not gonna be a real signature

that it came from space.

Now, it's still fairly improbable.

It's a little more likely

that you just get viruses on the Earth.

But the idea of a virus that's stuck

in an asteroid and then lands on Earth,

it's not as crazy as people think.

[Shatner] Meteorites delivering alien pathogens to Earth

sounds like it's straight out of a science fiction movie.

It's an unsettling thought,

especially when you consider the fact that about

17,000 space rocks

reach our planet each year.

And, recently,

scientists have discovered celestial objects

that seem to be of a mysterious origin.

Like in the case of a spacefaring asteroid

who some believe is from another solar system.

[Shatner] The island of Maui.

October 19, 2017.

Perched atop a 10,000-foot summit

at the Haleakala Observatory,

astronomers using the Pan-STARRS telescope

detect a mysterious object traveling at high speed

through our solar system.

The velocity and trajectory of this object

is unlike any that has ever been seen before.

I was in charge of coordinating the observing

to characterize the object.

The object was discovered on October 19.

There were images taken that showed an object moving rapidly

with respect to the stars.

The stars are individual streaks of light,

and this object was a dot.

So they knew it was moving fast.

So, at that point, they started to compute an orbit

to try and understand what this object was.

This orbit was a really dramatic difference

from what had been seen previously.

Everything in the solar system is either on a circular

or an elliptical orbit.

But it wasn't an elliptical orbit.

It was very clear

it was hyperbolic, meaning something coming

from outside the solar system.

[Mike Brown] This fascinating object

that was discovered in 2017,

it was the first object ever found

that we could tell for sure

it came from outside of our solar system.

People have talked about looking for things like this

for a long time,

and this was the first time we actually found one of these.

[Shatner] Because it originated outside our solar system,

the object was the first to be officially recognized

as interstellar.

It was given the Hawaiian name 'Oumuamua,

which means "messenger from afar."

But perhaps what's most curious about 'Oumuamua

is its odd shape,

which led some people to speculate

that this interstellar object

could be proof that we're not alone in the universe.

[Frank] When 'Oumuamua was first discovered,

lots of telescopes were trained on it,

and we tried to get every bit of observation that we could.

And it turned out it was weird.

It was a different kind of object than we expected.

It was long and slender,

cigar-shaped,

unlike anything we've seen from natural objects

like comets or asteroids.

[Nick Pope] People speculated that this might be

a piece of an extraterrestrial spacecraft.

An interesting postscript to the story

is that 'Oumuamua

behaved artificially.

When it left the solar system,

it picked up speed,

and that's not what you would normally expect.

[Shatner] Is 'Oumuamua really a piece of an alien spaceship

that zoomed through our solar system?

Ultimately, it's hard to say...

...because this interstellar object is long gone,

as it continues its journey across the universe.

But as it turns out,

some scientists believe that physical proof

of an extraterrestrial spacecraft

can actually be found

on our planet.

[Shatner reads on-screen text]

Nearly four years before the discovery of 'Oumuamua,

the stillness of the predawn hours is shattered

when a meteor, traveling at high speed,

slams into the ocean.

[Rod Pyle] In 2014,

this fairly large meteorite- about three feet across-

exploded over the ocean, and the parts were scattered

in about a mile of deep water.

Some people got very excited about this because,

given the trajectory it came in at

and the speed-

at 134,000 miles an hour, roughly-

maybe it wasn't from our solar system.

[Shatner] In 2022, the U.S. Space Force released data

which confirmed that the meteor

is the first known interstellar object to hit Earth.

And just like 'Oumuamua,

this object fueled intense speculation

that it is not merely a rock

but rather a piece of a spacecraft

built by extraterrestrial beings.

This theory has been thoroughly investigated

by astronomer Avi Loeb of Harvard University.

[Loeb] The reason

that the meteor is interesting

is because it has material strength

that is very unusual.

The meteor released a fireball when it exploded.

And from that we infer that the object

must've been tougher than iron,

tougher than all other meteors.

And that raises the possibility that it may have been

a spacecraft propelled artificially

and made of some alloy.

And, of course, if we do end up concluding

that it was artificial in origin, perhaps a spacecraft,

that would be the first time that we found evidence

for an object that originated from another civilization.

[Shatner] In 2021, Professor Loeb launched

an initiative called the Galileo Project

to try and recover pieces of the object.

Loeb and his team scoured the waters where the object crashed

in hopes of finding physical evidence

that could prove we're not alone in the universe.

And, incredibly,

in July of 2023,

Loeb announced that his team successfully retrieved

some fascinating metallic spheres

that are much stronger than any known natural meteor.

[Pyle] What's impressive is that the fragments of this

are very strong.

So this might not be a rock. It could be a machine

or it could be some kind of transponder

or any kind of artificial object created by another culture.

[Loeb] Science is guided by evidence,

not by prejudice and not by convictions.

And we hope, just like detectives,

to collect enough evidence that will tell us

the origins of this object.

[Shatner] Could scientists have discovered evidence

of extraterrestrial technology?

It's an exciting and perhaps unsettling possibility.

And for some researchers, celestial rocks of any kind

are not just fascinating space debris.

They are potential couriers of invisible infectious agents

that could wipe out life as we know it.

[Shatner] The danger Earth faces

from a massive, planet-killing asteroid

is both real and terrifying.

However, another chilling scenario

involving space rocks also exists.

Because, at this very moment,

Earth is being bombarded with millions of micrometeorites.

And those seemingly harmless rocks

could be carrying the seeds

of an extraterrestrial disease.

Every single day,

material from space constantly rains down onto the Earth.

Somewhere around 100,000 pounds every day.

And we believe that it is possible

for some sort of alien viruses

to hitch rides on micrometeoroids

and drift to the surface of our planet.

[Lau] I think a lot of us in astrobiology,

we've been so excited

for so long at possibly finding

definitive signs of alien life out there.

But one thing we don't talk about enough is

what happens if there is a malicious pathogen

coming from space to our planet

and infecting life as we know it

or changing life as we know it.

[Shatner] Could an alien virus infect

and perhaps destroy life on Earth?

It sounds like a horrific scenario

out of a science fiction movie.

And yet scientists claim that the threat posed

by an extraterrestrial plague is very real.

There have been experiments in which microorganisms

have been flown to the International Space Station...

...and exposed to the hard vacuum

and the radiation

and the temperature changes of deep space.

And many of those organisms survived.

So I think it is quite conceivable

that material raining down on the surface of the planet Earth

could carry biology in the form of viruses

from some other body in our solar system

or even from a distant star system.

[Shatner] Is there anything we can do

to protect ourselves from an extraterrestrial virus?

Perhaps a clue can be found by examining

how humanity has prepared for this threat before.

[Shatner reads on-screen text]

At Johnson Space Center, dozens of NASA scientists

watch with nervous anticipation

as the Apollo 11 lunar module

descends onto the Moon.

[beeping]

[Shatner] But their concern is not only for a safe landing.

[Shatner] NASA is also extremely worried

that the astronauts may get infected...

...with alien microbes.

[Amy Shira Teitel] When Apollo 11

landed on the Moon, there were still a lot of mysteries

about what they would actually find up there.

Because no one could be certain

that there wasn't some evil Moon plague up on the Moon

that the astronauts would bring back with them,

the Apollo 11 crew was actually quarantined for three weeks

starting the moment they closed the hatch after their moonwalk.

Being quarantined was easy during the return trip home,

because there was nowhere to go.

But once they were back on Earth,

this became a very delicate dance

of transporting them from the ocean to Houston

without exposing them to anything

or exposing what they might have to the world.

[Shatner] The Apollo 11 astronauts spent a total

of 21 days in isolation after returning to Earth.

Fortunately, they emerged with a clean bill of health.

But they weren't the only ones

NASA subjected to a strict quarantine.

Nearly 50 pounds of Moon rocks were collected on the mission,

and this material was also rigorously tested

for alien pathogens.

Scientists did a bunch of experiments

to make sure that there was nothing alive

and nothing potentially disastrous involved

in those samples.

They actually injected crushed-up rock

into insects and mice

to make sure that if there was anything ingested

or something that entered a human's bloodstream,

it wouldn't have an adverse effect.

In the end, NASA scientists realized

that there was nothing nefarious up on the Moon.

There was no Moon plague

that the astronauts were going to bring back with them.

And everything was safe coming home.

[Shatner] It's comforting to know that NASA has

procedures in place to quarantine a virus

that astronauts could potentially bring back

from space.

But what happens if our safety measures fail?

How would we handle the outbreak of an alien disease?

[Mogul] If an individual

gets infected

by an extraterrestrial microorganism or virus,

the next steps would be very critical.

That person would need to be isolated right away.

And hopefully that person is not exposed to the general public.

Because the unknown component

of what is causing the outbreak

would be very difficult to handle right away.

Especially if it's not

measurable by our science.

At that point, that's when the military would come in

to understand the nature of the outbreak, how fast it is,

and then would there be a way to contain it.

We haven't really dealt with this yet

because it's such a hypothetical case.

But are we ready for that worst-case scenario?

I'm not really sure we are.

[Shatner] Deadly plagues have ravaged our population

throughout human history.

So far, we've managed to survive all of the lethal outbreaks.

But if an alien disease ever spread across our planet,

would we be so lucky?

All life on Earth

shares some basic biochemistry in common.

We all use the same set of amino acids.

We all use DNA.

We all use proteins.

But alien life may have

a completely different set of chemical rules

that it uses to govern itself.

So an alien pathogen may try to get under our skin literally

and simply nothing happens

because we're playing by different rules.

On the other hand, if an alien pathogen

finds itself on the Earth,

it could very quickly adapt

and evolve to our local environment

and hijack our DNA replication mechanisms.

Because it's-it's just how life works.

Life finds a way.

It's alarming

to think that a deadly virus could arrive on our planet

by clinging to a falling space rock.

And yet there have been thousands of meteorites

that have hit Earth since its creation,

and life here still goes on.

These include a recent chilling discovery

buried deep beneath the ice of Antarctica.

[Shatner reads on-screen text]

Across the icy continent,

55 countries have established research stations

where scientists come to study topics like marine biology,

geologic mapping,

ice cores,

and objects from space,

like the 50,000 meteorites that have landed

on the snowy surface of Antarctica.

And many believe there are hundreds of thousands

more meteorites waiting to be found there.

The magnitude of some of these discoveries is amazing.

We've actually found more meteorites

on the ice in Antarctica

than anywhere else on the planet combined.

Roughly 60% of all the meteorites found on Earth

have been found in Antarctica.

So, all the time, we're finding meteorites

that we didn't even know existed there.

[Shatner] The weather conditions

and uncluttered setting of Antarctica

are said to be helpful

when spotting and collecting space rocks.

But a discovery in 2006,

deep underground in the Wilkes Land region,

could have the potential to rewrite Earth's history.

Wilkes Land is one of the most remote regions

of East Antarctica.

Gravity satellites run by NASA

discovered that there's a dense segment of rock

underneath the ice

that's heavier than everything else around it.

And one of the things that could cause an anomaly like this

is an impact crater.

But it's impossible to say for sure.

[Tim Swartz] Scientists believe what they discovered

was a massive, 300-mile-wide crater

that has been suggested was caused

by an asteroid...

...that struck the Earth

maybe as far back as 250 million years in the past.

And I don't think scientists know what else it could be.

Unfortunately,

we'll probably never know, because it's buried

under almost a mile of ice.

[Geiger] So, what we know is that there's something there.

What we don't know for sure is what it is,

but many scientists think that, possibly,

under the ice in Antarctica

is the largest impact crater

that is known ever to have existed on Earth.

[Shatner] It's intriguing to think

that a prehistoric 300-mile-wide meteor crater

may lie hidden below 5,000 feet of ice.

And if so, could it be the source

of a mega-impact event

that transformed the planet?

[Collins] If we look back into geological history,

we find out that around the same time

that the Wilkes Land anomaly was created,

there was a severe shift in the fossil record

that unquestionably involved a massive cataclysm

that must have changed the history of Earth itself.

[Ricksecker] There are people that believe

the timing of the Wilkes Land impact,

at about 250 million years ago,

could be the cause of the Permian-Triassic

extinction event, which would've wiped out

about 90% of all life on Earth.

So, this potential impact could absolutely be indicative

of a mass extinction event in our Earth's history.

[Shatner] Could the anomaly buried below Antarctica

have been responsible

for killing nearly all life on the planet?

Perhaps.

But what's even more incredible is that some experts suggest

an asteroid strike of this magnitude

may have been powerful enough to reshape the Earth itself.

[MacFerrin] Antarctica has not always been covered in ice.

It used to be a very different place than it is today.

It didn't even used to be at the South Pole.

It broke off from the Pangaean supercontinent

millions of years ago and drifted southward.

[Geiger] This crater that is still preserved

under the ice in Antarctica

might have to do with the breakup

of the supercontinent.

This massive meteor strike

could have hit so hard that it literally

caused volcanoes to erupt on the other side of the Earth.

It might be the event that helped

to break Antarctica off from Africa

and break Australia off from Antarctica.

[Shatner] The massive anomaly buried deep below Antarctica

may one day reshape our entire understanding of planet Earth.

But for now, the evidence remains beyond our reach.

[Huw Griffiths] Unfortunately,

whilst this idea is plausible,

because it's under miles of ice,

nobody can physically collect a rock specimen

to find out if what they think

may have happened is what has happened.

So, it's very difficult to know

if there's anything else potentially going on there

because we haven't got enough data yet.

But it does give an example of one of the many, many things

about Antarctica that we're currently unable to answer

because Antarctica is dominated by this huge amount of ice.

[Shatner] Will the ramifications

of this massive collision in Antarctica

reveal more clues to how our planet was formed?

For now, the answers will remain under a thick barrier of ice.

But there is another meteor,

that was found in Earth's Arctic region,

that's offering up information of a different kind

because it came from the planet Mars.

[Shatner reads on-screen text]

President Bill Clinton announces that NASA scientists have made

-a remarkable discovery. -Good afternoon.

[Shatner] The scientists examined an ancient Martian rock

that fell to Earth as a meteorite

in the distant past

and found evidence which suggests

that the meteorite once contained

microscopic Martian life inside it.

More than four billion years ago,

this piece of rock was formed

as a part of the original crust of Mars.

After billions of years, it broke from the surface

and began a 16-million-year journey

through space that would end here on Earth.

It speaks to the possibility of life.

If this discovery is confirmed,

it will surely be one of the most stunning insights

into our universe that science has ever uncovered.

Its implications are as far-reaching

and awe-inspiring as can be imagined.

[Teitel] This asteroid, called the Allan Hills asteroid,

was found in Antarctica.

It proved really valuable

because we've never been able to bring samples back,

but now we have this piece of Mars

to study in a lab on Earth,

which is really important

because, as our instruments get better,

we can continue to study it and learn more.

[Pyle] So, when they cracked the meteorite open,

they looked inside and they saw

what looked like fossilized life-forms.

They look like little tiny worms

and other bits of potentially fossilized biological matter.

And these were really small-

they were smaller than even a single-celled creature

would be on Earth- but they looked like life-forms.

And there were other indicators, in terms of the composition,

the makeup and the distribution of them

that led them to think that they might be life-forms.

It was so remarkable-looking

that it merited an announcement to the public,

and it caused a major stir.

[Richard Zare] Allan Hills meteorite

really changed the field of astrobiology.

There was a bunch of lines of evidence

that appeared to us to suggest the possibility

that this had something to do with primitive life.

[Shatner] According to experts, it's possible

that the Allan Hills meteorite actually brought

microscopic evidence of Martian life

to our planet when it landed here.

And the idea that any form of life

can travel from Mars to Earth

has caused many scientists to consider

an even more profound possibility:

what if life on Earth...

was seeded from Mars?

There's an idea in the field of astrobiology called panspermia,

and the essence of the idea is this:

four billion years ago, there may have been

life on Mars- microbial, but something.

A rock slams into Mars, you know, some asteroid,

it kicks up a big clod of Martian dirt.

Some of it gets kicked up fast enough

to just leave Mars altogether, wanders around the solar system.

But some of it, by chance, would fall on the Earth...

...and might infect the Earth.

[Michio Kaku] The panspermia theory cannot be dismissed.

And one reason is as follows.

In the early Earth, we were hit by meteors and asteroids.

In fact, it turns out that almost 300 meteorites

from Mars have been identified.

This means that perhaps DNA

may ride on these meteorites

as it goes from planet to planet.

So if, for example, life were to start on Mars first,

and a rock carrying Martian DNA

were to land on the planet Earth,

then, boom, life gets off the ground.

So,

one theory is that

if you want to see a Martian,

look in a mirror tonight.

[Pyle] Has life migrated, possibly, from Mars to Earth?

It's possible.

We can't say yes, we can't say no yet.

Any Mars scientist you talk to-

any planetary geologist- will tell you

they would love to have that dinosaur bone moment,

they would love for the rover to roll up

and find a giant fossilized femur,

or even something alive.

We may find these things someday.

But we're not gonna know until we get there

and find life on Mars

and are able to look at it, get some DNA out of it

and figure out if it ended up on Earth, or if it's something

completely alien to us.

[Shatner] If scientists are someday able to confirm

that life came from Mars to Earth,

then it begs the question:

What would such a discovery mean to humanity?

Mars might hold the key to understanding

the origin of life.

It has a lot of potential to help us understand

where we fit in the biggest-scale picture

of the universe and the history of the Earth,

because we want to understand the history of this planet.

How did we get to a place where humans were here?

Science is based on things that are testable,

falsifiable, reproducible.

And, as Carl Sagan once said,

"Remarkable claims require remarkable proof."

But if...

if we have one solid piece of evidence

that Mars seeded the Earth,

that would force historians of science to rewrite

all the science textbooks

and change our role in the universe.

[Shatner] For millions of years,

our planet has been bombarded by meteors

of different sizes, shapes and compositions.

While some space rocks explode on impact

high in the atmosphere,

others make their way to Earth's surface.

And throughout human history,

these extraordinary stones have held a special-

and, at times, sacred- allure.

Such is the case with a meteorite

that was considered an offering from the gods

sent to protect one of ancient Egypt's famous young pharaohs.

The Valley of the Kings, Egypt.

February 16, 1923.

A British excavation team led by archaeologist Howard Carter

enters an underground ancient Egyptian burial chamber.

Once inside, they break a protective seal

that guards the tomb of King Tutankhamun.

[Chris Naunton] Carter lifts up a lamp,

and they look through and see that Tutankhamun

is buried with this fantastic array

of more than 5,000 objects.

The room is absolutely full to bursting

with gold and precious stones

and various other precious and valuable items,

more or less exactly in places they'd been left

more than 3,000 years ago.

[Shatner] Of the thousands of wondrous artifacts

found in King Tut's tomb, perhaps the most extraordinary

is an exquisitely forged 13-inch iron dagger.

[Naunton] The dagger is a really sensational object,

with a golden sheath which is decorated

with a chased feather pattern.

It was placed on the thigh of the king,

and of all the 5,000 objects in the tomb,

the vast majority of them were nowhere near as close

as that to the very body of the king.

So, this is something very, very important.

[Ramy Romany] King Tut's reign

was about 1330 BC.

At that time, King Tut's dagger was a very important piece,

as a symbol that the gods handed him this power.

That's why the iron dagger was buried with King Tut.

He needed it on his journey to the afterlife.

[Dominic Steavu] In the afterlife,

King Tut was charged, uh, with the very important mission

of assisting the sun god Ra.

Ancient Egyptians believed that when the Sun set every day,

Ra would traverse the underworld,

which was a dark, murky, watery place

fraught with dangers and demons and beasts.

So, King Tut would use this dagger

to literally defend

and fight off these hordes of enemies.

And so, there's this belief that the blade of the dagger had

miraculous and spiritual powers.

[Shatner] The idea that King Tut was buried

with a mighty iron dagger

to vanquish foes in the afterlife

is certainly a great story.

But is it possible that the dagger

actually possesses divine power,

as the ancient Egyptians believed?

Perhaps the answer lies in the mysterious origins

of this sacred relic.

[Naunton] The Egyptians had essentially no ability

in smelting iron at the time of Tutankhamun.

And so,

the iron, uh, from this dagger that, uh, Tutankhamun

was buried with, it comes from elsewhere.

The Egyptians, of course, thought that the only

reasonable explanation for the presence

of a very exquisitely, perfectly worked iron dagger

was that the iron itself

was some kind of gift directly from the gods.

We now know, however, thanks to very recent scientific analysis,

that the iron doesn't come from iron ore in the ground,

it is meteoric iron,

which comes from a meteorite

landing on Earth from space.

For Egyptians, the sky is where the gods were.

So, you have to understand,

at that time in ancient Egypt, 3,500 years ago,

a meteorite falling on Earth with iron in it,

and piece of it looked like a dagger,

symbolically, that piece of iron

was a gift from the gods for the ancient Egyptians.

[Shatner] Did the ancient Egyptians believe

that King Tut's dagger

had otherworldly powers because it literally came

from another world?

It would not be surprising to think so,

because even today, our fascination and fear

of the mysterious objects that fall from the sky

are as powerful as they were for our ancestors

thousands of years ago.

Can a single meteorite really possess the power to heal?

Or is it more likely that it carries

a deadly disease from the far reaches of space?

Could the next meteor shower we encounter

escort an alien life-form to Earth's surface?

Whatever the case, our knowledge of meteors,

asteroids and comets soaring through our universe

and the impact they can have here on planet Earth

is a mystery of galactic proportions,

that for now remains...

...unexplained.

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